Monday, May 28, 2007

Here, he talks about what what potential readers can expect from his latest novel:

"...like the country, Brasyl sidles up to you, shakes its ass, gets you to buy it a drink and in the morning you wake up with an STD, your wallet gone and a kidney missing but the memory of a hell of a ride. A hell of a ride.

Pyr will be at Book Expo America next weekend, from May 31st to June 3rd, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. We'll be in parent company Prometheus Books' booth, # 4532, and, FYI, its possible we'll only be listed in the program as "Prometheus Books." I'll only be there Friday and Saturday myself, but attendees will want to stop by and pick up the exclusive Part One galley we've made for Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself. Oh, and while we're on the subject, check out the subtly different US cover.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Author and television scriptwriter Paul Cornell is launching the Deanna Hoak World Fantasy Awards Campaign, to "persuade those of you who’ve bought memberships this year, or to either of the last two World Fantasy Conventions, to use your nominations and, later, votes in the World Fantasy Awards to honour one particular person. "

I heartily endorse his efforts. Deanna copyedits most of the original manuscripts at Pyr. She's marvelous, and while her efforts largely go unnoticed by readers, she is the only copyeditor I have ever met whose praises are routinely sung by authors. This is a rare and fabulous thing.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Really pleased to see Robert Charles Wilson's "The Cartesian Theater" as a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Awards, especially gratifying since it originally debuted in my own anthology, FutureShocks. Also good to see Ian McDonald's "The Djinn's Wife," Paolo Bacigalupi's excellent, "Yellow Card Man, and Benjamin Rosenbaum's "The House Beyond Your Sky." Congrats to everyone, of course, those are just the stories I've read. And good stories they were. I certainly couldn't pick between them.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

I'm back again on the fabulous Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast. Shaun Farrell is introducing a new feature called From the Editor's Desk, so after the Vicki Petterssen interview, Shaun runs my opinion of free online content and related. Shaun asked me several questions, which he plans to space across several Editor's Desk segments, so expect more of these in the coming weeks!

Friday, May 11, 2007

The wonderful Small World Podcast, which features "interviews with people from all walks of life from all over the planet," has just uploaded an interview with yours truly. We cover a host of subjects, including:

how Pyr began and how Pyr is different from other science fiction/fantasy imprints;

Pyr books like Keeping It Real, Crossover, Brasil, and Fast Forward 1

publishers that have a following;

where the name Pyr came from;

the artwork that appears on the covers of Pyr books;

the emerging themes in science fiction in the 21st century;

how the SciFi channel almost missed the boat with Doctor Who;

the escapsim/literature debate;

and the subversive nature of science fiction, including how Star Trek addressed racism

“…so good that I suggest Pyr wait a year and republish it with the title BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF 2007. This is an important book that can move science fiction one step closer to the “literature” shelf, if it so desires…Anders has coaxed such incredible goodness out of these writers that if you only read one or two stories a month, it’s better than a year’s subscription to most of the genre magazines out there...With a deep bench of talent and a perfectly paced setlist, Lou Anders has made made a book that truly represents its own theme. Fast Forward has the potential to be the future of short-form science fiction.”

To round it off, Jeff asked me who would score a soundtrack for the entire Pyr line if such a thing were possible. My answer got truncated, so with Jeff's kind permission and tongue firmly in cheek, I'll run the whole thing here:

From the get go, I've wanted Pyr to have both a respect for speculative fiction's illustrious history and an eye on the future.

I've maintained that you can have mild blowing concepts and good characters in the same book, action/adventure with sensawunder, literary sensibilities with mass appeal - that commercially-viable action set pieces did not preclude asking the big questions or aiming for the stars. One can have their cake and eat it too.

I've mixed old masters like Moorcock, Resnick and Silverberg with new voices like Edelman, Robson and Williams.

And we've published everything from epic fantasy to space opera to literary soft-science SF to urban fantasy to new weird to wacky sci-fantasy with elves on motorbikes.

I've tried to publish a diverse line where the only thru line is quality.

Obviously, the Pyr soundtrack can only be scored by one musician.

A man who can be as deep and mysterious as 2001 and as relevant and dangerous as 1984, or as surface and pop as fashion and dance, sound and music.

He writes about sex and drugs and gender issues, and spacemen and aliens and technological innovation slash alienation.

He has been there first in glam, soul, new age, fusion and a dozen other muscial genres.

He never does the same thing twice and he never runs out of imagination and he never gets tired.

He puts out fire with gasoline.

He is the Man Who Fell to Earth, the Man Who Sold the World, the Laughing Gnome, the Goblin King.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

"Ian McDonald's Brasyl is his finest novel to date, and that's really, really saying something. There are McDonald novels -- Hearts, Hands and Voices, Desolation Road, Out on Blue Six that I must have read dozens of times, as you might watch Gene Kelly dance over and over, seeing it but never quite understanding how he does it.

Cory goes on to describe the trifold structure of the narrative, then comes up with my favorite literary metaphor to date:

"McDonald's prose is like chili-spiced chocolate and rum -- it reels drunken and mad through the book, filling your head to the sinuses, with rich complex tastes, until it seems that they'll run out of your ears and eyeballs, until it feels like you're sweating poetry."

Finally, he concludes:

"Brasyl masterfully braids its three timelines together into a master story that is both exciting and enlightening. I don't think I've had as many a-ha! moments about the metaphysics of computation since reading Cryptonomicon. There isn't a McDonald novel written that I haven't loved, but this one, this one is special."

Frostborn

Thrones and Bones

About Me

Lou Anders is the author of the Thrones and Bones series, a middle grade fantasy adventure that begins with the novel Frostborn, published by Random House’s Crown Books for Young Readers. He is a Hugo award winning editor and a Chesley Award winning art director, with six additional Hugo nominations, six additional Chesley nominations, three World Fantasy award nominations, a Shirley Jackson award nomination and a Philip K. Dick award nominations. For ten years, he served as the editorial director of Pyr books. Additionally, he is the editor of nine anthologies, including Swords & Dark Magic (Eos, 2010, with Jonathan Strahan), and Masked (Gallery Books, 2010). He is the author of The Making of Star Trek: First Contact (Titan Books, 1996), and has published over 500 articles in such magazines as The Believer, Publishers Weekly, Dreamwatch, DeathRay, Star Trek Monthly, Star Wars Monthly, Babylon 5 Magazine, Sci Fi Universe, Doctor Who Magazine, and Manga Max. His articles and stories have been translated into Russian, Spanish, Danish, Greek, German, Italian & French.